Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Happy Thanksgiving

The librarians at BLS wish all of you happy and healthy Thanksgiving and that hope you will take the time to relax and spend time with your families.

During this week of Thanksgiving — arguably the most American of holidays —NPR is spending time thinking about what it means to become an American. The answers come from three noted authors — Junot Diaz, Jhumpa Lahiri and Joseph O'Neill — who've written about newcomers to the United States.

One of the authors, Joseph O'Neill, talks to today’s Morning Edition in a recorded interview and says that the meaning of nationality and nationhood have changed dramatically in the past two decades. The age of globalization has led to what O'Neill calls an "enormous collapse in the idea of migration."

"It used to be the case that for an Irishman to come to the U.S. involved a perilous journey on a ship," O'Neill says. "It involved singing lots of songs before you left saying goodbye, and once you were in the U.S., it involved singing lots of songs about how you were never going to set foot in Ireland again."

Not so anymore. Nowadays, says O'Neill, the transfer of people from country to country is less decisive: "You can go backwards and forwards as much as you like, subject to legal and financial restrictions. And you can stay in touch with everyone back home. You can read their blogs, you can speak to them on the phone."

"One of the great pluses of being an immigrant is you get to start again in terms of your identity," he says. "You get to shed the narratives which cling to you." O'Neill says he found America to be a welcoming place, where people were less inclined to make judgments based on race or class — but also not particularly interested in learning about his background. "As long as you show willingness, they are prepared to stick the label of 'American' on you," he says.